Atheists have discovered their own brand of waffly spirituality. God, it's embarrassing

Atheists get a hard time in these pages. Brendan O’Neill has called them “the most colossally smug and annoying people on the planet”, “with a mammoth superiority complex”. He’s called them “the kind of people who… spend their every tragic waking hour doing little more than mocking the faithful”, “teeth-grating”, “screechy” and “boring”. All very amusing, but not entirely fair. They are so much worse than that.

There’s a group of atheists emerging on quite another level: let’s call it the “wet humanist wing”. This is not a small wing. In fact it includes all their celebrities, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, de Botton, people who think they’re moving beyond this kind of criticism.

These atheists are starting to get spiritual. They’ve worked out that religion has left a gap in our psychological needs, and now they’re trying to find something to fill that gap.

Alain de Botton lays it out in his book "Religion for Atheists". Religion, he says, “serves two central needs… the need to live together in communities in harmony… and the need to cope with terrifying degrees of pain”. Can we please find something, not religion, to do this for us instead?

Sam Harris, too, argues that the spiritual has its place. “Clearly people have extraordinary experiences, whether this is because they are on LSD… or happen to have the neurology that is particularly labile”, he has said. It’s a pity though, that “religion seems to be the only game in town in talking about those experiences”.

Here’s the problem: their substitutes are embarrassingly sterile. I’ve read “Religion for Atheists”, and can tell you that as a spiritual guide, de Botton offers as much opportunity for growth as a hard-boiled egg. Look, for example, at his homemade "10 commandments", one of which is "Have a sense of humour". It reads:

“Seeing the funny sides of situations and of oneself doesn’t sound very serious, but it is integral to wisdom, because it’s a sign that one is able to put a benevolent finger on the gap between what we want to happen and what life can actually provide; what we dream of being and what we actually are, what we hope other people will be like and what they are actually like”.

I don’t know quite where to start with deconstructing this, other than reading it out in a nasal voice, but it’s really not “Thou shalt not kill”. The commandment has as much commanding power as a get well soon card.

“What these people have realized is one of the best secrets of life: let your self go… Keeping [an] awestruck vision of the world ready to hand while dealing with the demands of daily living is no easy exercise, but it is definitely worth the effort, for if you can stay centred, and engaged, you will find the hard choices easier, the right words will come to you when you need them, and you will indeed be a better person.”

He’s right: keeping an awestruck vision of the world to hand is no easy exercise. That’s why religious texts echo with centuries of hushed repetition, rivers of ancient blood spilled, lives worn out struggling with unimaginable paradoxes of faith, a struggle for their very souls. These texts don’t use words like “centred”, or “engaged”. They work quite well. The cognitive associations are all there already.

Here’s the irony. De Botton and co are trying, scientifically, to construct a placebo. But scientifically, a placebo only works if you believe in it. Scientifically, religion is a much more effective placebo.

There are studies. As Sean Thomas points out, the religious heal faster. They recover quicker from drug and alcohol abuse, they have stronger immune systems and deal better with stress. And they are more generous.

But take even a quintessentially self-help aspiration like discipline. Diets and New Year’s resolutions fail, but people manage to keep by religious rules their whole lives through. Experiments done in Ontario last year found that even subtle mentions of religion, even for non-believers, have a significant effect on will-power. There’s something about the presence of a God that just makes it easier to control yourself.

If religion's the opiate of the masses, the new atheists want a hit. They’d just rather take it cut with baby powder.